Toure Leaves as ManCity Legend

The Ivorian midfielder will start his final game at the Etihad on Wednesday and though he has rarely played this term, he will depart a club legend.

Yaya Toure may have had a strange, perhaps even ignominious, final season at Manchester City, but he will leave the club a hero, with his reputation arguably as high as it has ever been. That was not always a guarantee.

At the start of last season, he was as out-of-favour with some City supporters as he was with Pep Guardiola, yet while he has barely had a look-in for several months, his popularity with the fans and his team-mates has soared. 

Indeed, on Sunday, as City prepared to receive their Premier League trophy, Toure’s name was cheered as loudly as any other by the Etihad Stadium faithful.

Meanwhile, his team-mates were so focused on crowding around him and raining down playful slaps upon his head –  as they have done regularly in training these past few months – that the jubilant group backed up towards the trophy until they knocked it from the plinth, crown-first into the turf. It was, in a literal sense, a reminder that Toure has left his mark on the Premier League; a timely one, too.

The public squabbles between Toure’s agent and various City figures during his eight-year stay in Manchester have, at times, genuinely threatened to undermine his legacy.

At the start of last season, as Dimitri Seluk and Guardiola argued via the media, many City fans started to wonder why Toure did not simply disown the Russian fixer. 

There had been issues before but this time they meant the Ivorian would, seemingly, never play for the club again; that he would spend the season in exile and leave on a free transfer. Surely, plenty pondered, this was as much Toure’s fault as anybody's?

That the midfielder managed to fight his way back to become one of the most impressive and reliable performers of a difficult season spoke volumes for the mentality and, above all, commitment that many had started to doubt.

He had won back his place in Guardiola’s plans, and the hearts of City fans. His two-goal salvo on his shock return at Crystal Palace ranks among the most memorable contributions of his time in England. 

There are plenty of less in-your-face moments, too. His imposing physique has long betrayed a more subtle ability, a way of running games with astute passes and tidy feints that only really became strikingly obvious to non-City fans last season, when he sat deep and dictated games in Guardiola’s new system.

This season, he has not had as obvious a role in his club’s triumphs, but nobody could deny the part he has played in providing the platform for them, and whatever comes later.

These will be the moments that are cherished on Wednesday night, and for the years to come. This, and nothing else, will be Yaya Toure’s Manchester City legacy.